Initial attempt Admiral Hipper departed
Kiel bound for the Atlantic on 24 September 1940. She put in at
Kristiansand in Norway to repair a broken cooling pump, and sailed again on 27 September.
Admiral Hipper suffered an engine room fire the next day while sailing to the west of
Stavanger. Both
turbines had to be shut down to allow her crew to fight the fire, leaving the ship adrift for four hours. The damage from the fire forced the abandonment of the sortie. The cruiser arrived back at Kiel on 30 September, and proceeded to
Hamburg on 2 October for repairs. These were completed on 28 October. During this period
Admiral Scheer departed Germany on 23 October 1940 for what proved to be a successful raid into the Atlantic and Indian Oceans that lasted until 1 April 1941.
Breakout into the Atlantic Once the repairs were completed
Admiral Hipper underwent training in the
Baltic Sea from 29 October until 18 November. She then loaded ammunition and supplies for a long range operation into the Atlantic. This sortie, code named Operation Nordseetour (German: "North Sea Tour"), was more ambitious than that which had been planned for September. The goal of the operation was to attack Allied convoys in the North Atlantic. The cruiser was not to attack ships sailing independently. Due to
Admiral Hippers relatively short range and lack of durability, the plans for the operation called for the ship make a relatively short cruise compared to that which was undertaken by
Admiral Hipper. She was to enter the North Atlantic, sail south and then proceed east along the Allied convoy routes. At the conclusion of the operation
Admiral Hipper was to dock in France. Consistent with standing practices for German surface raiders, Meisel was ordered to not engage enemy forces that were superior or equal to his ship. At this time the German
signals intelligence service was providing raiders with general information about the locations of Allied ships. The service was generally unable to pass on actionable intelligence though, as it could not decrypt intercepted Royal Navy radio messages. In particular, the Germans lacked information on the dates Allied convoys sailed and the routes they took. Each raider embarked a detachment that was responsible for monitoring Allied radio signals and using
direction finding techniques to locate convoys and warships. The cruiser set out again from
Brunsbüttel on 30 November. She had been spotted there by a
Royal Air Force reconnaissance aircraft the previous day, but the British did not realise that her presence at the port meant she was about to sail.
Admiral Hipper was escorted by four
torpedo boats for the first stage of the voyage. She refuelled from a tanker at a
fjord near
Bergen in Norway on 1 December before proceeding north. Meisel wanted a period of bad weather to help hide his ship from British patrols while passing
Allied occupied Iceland, and he operated to the south of
Jan Mayan island for the next several days. During this period, the cruiser refuelled from the tanker
Adria on 2, 3 and 5 December. After the weather worsened,
Admiral Hipper passed through the
Denmark Strait that separated Greenland and Iceland on the night of 6/7 December. She was not detected by the British. After entering the Atlantic,
Admiral Hipper proceeded to the waters off southern Greenland to rendezvous with the tanker
Friedrich Breme. It took several days to locate the tanker, during which
Admiral Hippers crew experienced extreme cold and a
hurricane force storm.
Attack on Convoy WS 5A Once refuelling was complete,
Admiral Hipper began searching for convoys on the key route between
Halifax in Canada and the United Kingdom. She patrolled to the south of the routes taken by convoys though, and did not encounter any. The crew endured another hurricane level storm, the cruiser's starboard engine failed and she ran dangerously low on fuel at one point.
Admiral Hipper refuelled again from
Friedrich Breme on 16 and 20 December. When
Admiral Sheer attacked a British merchant ship off West Africa during 18 December, her captain did not attempt to jam the distress calls with the goal of encouraging the Royal Navy to focus on his ship rather than
Admiral Hipper. On 20 December Meisel decided to conclude the operation, and set course for Brest.
Admiral Hipper detected multiple ships with her
radar at 8:45 pm on 24 December while sailing west of
Cape Finisterre in Spain. This was
Convoy WS 5A, which had sailed from the United Kingdom carrying 40,000 soldiers and large quantities of supplies on board 20 ships. The
WS convoys were special convoys that carried troops and supplies from the United Kingdom to Egypt and Asia on board fast ships. They were assigned powerful escort forces. Five of the ships were travelling with the convoy in the North Atlantic before entering the Mediterranean Sea to form part of an
Operation Excess convoy that would carry supplies to Malta and Greece. Convoy WS 5A's escort comprised the heavy cruiser as well as the
light cruisers and . Only
Dunedin was fitted with radar. The light cruiser had also formed part of the escort until 24 December. The
aircraft carriers and were sailing with the convoy to transport land-based aircraft to West Africa. As their
flight decks were crowded with these aircraft, the two carriers could only fly off five of their own aircraft. Meisel believed that he had found one of the weakly escorted
OB convoys that sailed from the United Kingdom to Africa and decided to attack it at dawn the next day. His radar was unable to distinguish escorts from cargo vessels. When in the darkness
Admiral Hipper detected a large ship at the rear of the convoy, the Germans thought it was an escorting
armed merchant cruiser. Preferring to weaken the escort before attacking the convoy in the morning, Meisel decided to attack with torpedoes which would not give away his presence as the British would believe they were under U-Boat attack.
Admiral Hipper fired three torpedoes at the convoy at 1:53 am on 25 December, but none hit. The German sailors spotted the convoy to the west at 6:03 am on Christmas Day. Weather conditions were poor, with a strong wind, heavy seas, limited visibility and rain
squalls.
Berwick was among the first ships to be sighted, and other escorts were soon spotted. Meisel turned his ship towards the British heavy cruiser. The attack plan was to approach unsuspected as close as possible, to be able to attack the ship with a three torpedo fan shot from the rear torpedo launcher. But fire was opened on her with his 203-millimetre guns from a range of at 6:39 am, before the torpedoes were launched. As a result, the torpedo launcher was blocked by the blast of the guns and the launch had to aborted. Similarly the launching of 3 torpedoes from the forward launcher was botched when the secondary armament opened fire on the other escorts. While the British had not spotted
Admiral Hipper,
Berwicks crew were at dawn
action stations when the engagement began. They returned fire at
Admiral Hipper from 6:41 am, and the light cruisers changed course to join the fight. During this period
Admiral Hippers secondary armament fired at the transports, damaging
Empire Trooper and
Arabistan. Two men were killed on
Empire Trooper. In line with his orders to not engage equal or superior forces, Meisel sought to end the battle. He believed that the British light cruisers were destroyers, and turned to port to evade a possible torpedo attack.
Admiral Hippers rear turrets continued to fire at
Berwick, and her secondary armament engaged the light cruisers. Meisel was able to break contact at 6:43 am but was sighted by
Berwick again at 6:47 am. At this time the British cruiser was on a parallel course approximately to the port of
Admiral Hipper.
Berwick opened fire, and
Admiral Hipper fired back. At 7:05 am a 203-millimetre shell disabled one of
Berwicks gun turrets, and she was hit below the waterline soon afterwards. Rain squalls then allowed Miesel to evade the British at 7:14 am by sailing north west. The British cruisers rejoined the convoy. Convoy WS 5A's ships had been ordered to scatter at 6:50 am, and it proved difficult to reassemble them.
Admiral Hipper did not suffer any damage in this engagement and
Berwick required repairs that took six months to complete. Following the battle
Admiral Hipper returned to a course bound for Brest. The ship was continuing to experience engine problems and was running low on fuel. At 10:00 am on 25 December,
Admiral Hippers crew sighted the cargo ship
Jumma sailing by itself. She was sunk by a single
salvo from the cruiser's 203-millimetre guns and two torpedoes. None of
Jummas crew of 111 survived.
Admiral Hipper docked at Brest on 27 December. This made her the first major German warship to arrive at a port in occupied France. Royal Air Force
Coastal Command aircraft had attempted to locate
Admiral Hipper as she approached Brest, but did not spot her. ==Aftermath==